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Due to internal and external change drivers, manufacturing companies must adapt their production systems regularly. Factory buildings typically have a service life of several decades and, therefore, must accommodate multiple generations of production systems. To achieve this, buildings require a design that is universal to a certain degree yet adaptable when universality is not sufficient – buildings must be future-proof. Such a design requires anticipating potential future requirements and deciding which requirements to fulfil. Methods from the research field of foresight, especially the scenario technique, can support this process. However, these methods often require extensive calculations, making software support mandatory. This paper first provides an overview of the state of research on scenario-based planning of future-proof buildings and introduces a previously developed planning method. It then identifies requirements regarding a respective software tool. Afterwards, the paper presents the development of such a tool’s prototype. Finally, the tool is deployed in a case study that covers planning a battery cell production facility to validate its function. The case study demonstrates that the method, in combination with the tool, effectively supports the planning of future-proof factory buildings. It thereby prolongs the service life of factory buildings by facilitating easy adaptions of the production systems within.

In today's globalized world, companies with an international manufacturing network (IMN) rely on the effective distribution of their production activities – as part of their network configuration. In addition, increasing trends towards de-globalization in IMNs confront companies with new challenges in their network design. Therefore, numerous methods for defining network and production strategies, creating network configurations, or coordinating these networks have been developed in recent years. Many of these management approaches use so-called site roles, providing the production sites in the network with a more or less clear allocation of tasks and competencies. This can reduce the complexity within an IMN and help transfer the network strategy into a suitable configuration. However, one shortcoming of existing site role concepts is that they do not consider the specific design of individual plants that is appropriate for the respective role and, therefore, the definite effects on the factory planning method. Thus, site role-related design rules for generating factory layouts can contribute to the mandatory standardization of factory structures in the network. This increases the agility of the production network and enables the management to adapt the network rather quickly in response to a changing strategy or disruptive global conditions. In this article, the specific requirements that a site role concept must fulfill to offer benefits for factory planning in IMN are deduced. As part of a systematic literature review, existing site role concepts are collected and, finally, evaluated against the identified requirements. The paper serves as a basis for further research and the derivation of a corresponding site role concept that meets the defined requirements.

The article addresses a method for generating project schedules for factory relocations based on a planned layout concept in reorganisation projects. The layout is modelled in a cell grid with cells of uniform edge length. The factory objects are arranged in this grid for both the actual and the target layout state. Further input parameters relate to the required time and personnel resources according to several operations. A two-stage optimisation algorithm is presented, which first checks a given solution for layout feasibility and then generates and solves a project scheduling problem on this basis. Accordingly, elements of the facility layout problem are integrated into a resource constrained project scheduling problem. The process steps of generating and evaluating of the project schedule are further embedded in a genetic algorithm, which successively improves the solution. The project schedules for relocation are evaluated through a combination of the resulting project duration and the downtimes of all factory objects. The aim of the optimisation is to minimise both objective values considering a weighting factor. The article concludes by validating the method using a practical example.

This article examines the use of point clouds as a geometric data basis for factory planning and compares different mapping techniques for generating these point clouds. Data and information acquisition is a crucial step in factory planning and thus in developing efficient production processes. In this context, different mapping techniques are analysed: photogrammetry (using drones and action cameras) and lidar scans (performed both from drones and from the ground). The methodology and results of this investigation are discussed in detail, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each mapping technique. The focus is on comparing the generated point clouds in terms of completeness, recognisability and geometric tolerance. This comparison provides valuable insights into which technique is best suited for the data acquisition of factory planning. The outlook of this paper includes the further development of recording techniques, particularly with regard to autonomously flying drones. In the future, these could enable more efficient and precise data acquisition for factory planning and thus further strengthen the basis for optimising production processes.

Product quality is critical to the competitiveness of manufacturing companies facing complex challenges such as shorter product life cycles and competition that has shifted from customers competing for products to manufacturers competing for customers. Therefore, quality management is essential to satisfy today's quality requirements, focusing on error prevention rather than error detection. Since the factory planning process provides the framework for the production factors and restrictions of factory operation, it is necessary to integrate quality management into factory planning at an early stage. The integration must ensure a flexibility to adapt to constant changes, proactively prevent expensive error elimination and ensure high-quality processes. A previously conducted literature review indicated that the existing solutions do not sufficiently integrate quality management into factory planning. Consequently, there is currently no optimal solution approach available that effectively enables targeted and iterative communication between the disciplines of factory planning and quality management. Agile methods and tools can bridge this interface. However, to effectively integrate these methods and tools, they must first be organized into a toolkit that provides methods and tools for different purposes and situations. This paper aims to develop a modular toolkit through a multi-level systematic literature review. This approach categorizes 26 agile methods and tools based on their inputs, outputs, and purposes. The result is a modular toolkit that consists of nine categories and forms the basis for the successful integration of agile methods and tools into the factory planning process according to the Association of German Engineers (VDI) 5200 guideline.